profeffedly below them all, when he concludes the afcending climax with the words, " or indeed with fufficient power and firength." Every term introduced as this is, ought to be the last of a defcending feries. In the next place, fecurity ought to have preceded eafe, for the fame reason that he hath made both fecurity and eafe to precede bonour and dignity. Laftly, I do not feer at fufficient diftinction between fecurity, and fufficient power and frength.

I have now enumerated the principal fources of pleasure which enter into works of genius and imagination; and, for the fake of illuftration, have given, under each head, a felect number of examples, from the most celebrated authors, of paffages which derive their merit from each of them. I shall now give a view of the whole in a very fhort compafs.

Every thing that hath a striking or pleasing effect in compofition, muft either draw out and exercife our faculties, or elfe, by the principle of affociation, must transfer from foreign objects ideas that tend to improve the fenfe; the principal of which are views of human fentiments, of the effects of the human genius, and of a rife and improvement in things.

If it be thought that some other ingredients contribute to render a difcourse engaging, I apprehend it will be found, upon reflection, that those advantages belong to the subject of a discourse, and are by no means in the choice of a compofer: whereas the beauties that have been enumerated and explained in these lectures, are fuch as depend upon the compofition, and therefore fuch as may be neglected and overlooked by a compofer. If any perfon should imagine that the moral fenfe, the fenfe of honour, of benevolence, and of devotion, ought to have been allowed fome

influence

influence in works of genius and imagination; it is acknowledged that the fubjects of compofition may please, by reason of their exhibiting scenes adapted to gratify thofe fenfes. But then we ought, for the fame reason, not to have excluded the external fenfes, or any faculty whereby we receive pleasure; because it may be faid, with refpect to them all, that ideas may be presented in a discourse or compofition, which could have had no power to please or to affect us but in confequence of our having fuch fenfes. It is in reality, for the reafon above mentioned, equally foreign to the business of criticism, to take notice of any of them, any farther than they are neceffarily connected with the pleasures of the imagination.

LECTURE

LECTURE XXXII.

Of PERSPICUITY in Style.

T may not be amifs to conclude this account of what it is that makes style pleafing, with a few obfervations on what tends to make it perfpicuous; especially as, in fact, this property is the more effential of the two. For, certainly, the first care of a judicious writer will be to make his meaning easily understood, and therefore to keep his ftyle free from ambiguity.

A fentence must be ambiguous when it is impoffible to determine, from the ftructure of it, to which antecedent a relative refers, or to what principal clause of a sentence a circumftance introduced into it belongs. In the following fentence from Middleton, it doth not appear whether miracles or battles be the antecedent to the relative which.

They have also many churches and public monuments erected "in teftimony of fuch miracles, viz. of faints and angels, fighting "for them in their battles, which, though always as ridiculous". The conftruction would direct us to battles, but the fenfe to miracles. The circumftance [with great care and diligence] in the following fentence is not placed where it is apparent, at first fight, to what it belongs.

"This morning, when one of Lady Lizard's daughters was "looking over fome hoods and ribbands, brought by her tire66 woman, with great care and diligence, I employed no less in examining the box which contained them." GUARDIAN.

66

These ambiguities will be prevented, if, in a cafe like the former, the relative be always placed immediately after its proper antecedent; and, in the latter, if the circumftance be immediately subjoined to that clause of a sentence to which it belongs, provided it never be placed between two clauses to which it may equally belong. It is not a fufficient vindication of paffages which are left ambiguous for want of attending to these particulars, that the fense will determine to which the relative or the circumstance refers for the structure of a sentence ought to be fuch, as to leave the hearer or reader no trouble to find out the meaning, by comparing one thing with another.

It favours perfpicuity, and procures every member of a fentence the degree of attention that is due to it, when the incidental circumstances of an affirmation are introduced pretty early in a fentence, and the principal ideas are referved to the laft; for were those circumftances placed after the principal idea, they would either have no attention at all paid to them, or they would take from that which is due to the principal idea; and, in either cafe, a sentence conftructed in that manner is flat and languid. The circumstances attending Mr. Woolston's recantation, are well introduced in the following fentence:

"At Saint Bride's church, in Fleet-ftreet, Mr. Woolston (who "wrote against the miracles of our Saviour) in the utmost terrors " of conscience, made a public recantation."

But

But in the next, the claufe [in the fixth book of the Eneid] is aukwardly introduced:

"Virgil, who hath caft the whole system of Platonic philofophy, fo far as it relates to the foul of man, into beautiful allegories, in the fixth book of his Æneid, gives us the punishment," &c.

If it be thought proper to crowd a number of circumstances into one fentence, it is adviseable not to place them all together, but to intermix them with the principal members of the sen

tence.

There may be one inconvenience in referving the principal members of a sentence to the laft, that if any thing which precedes it be absolutely unintelligible without it, and pretty remote from it, it will be difficult for the reader to connect in his mind thofe disjointed members, fo as to make the sense easy. The neceffity for inversion in blank verse frequently obliges the writers of it to make the reader wait for any fenfe at all, through the whole of a pretty long fentence; as Milton hath done in the beginning of Paradife Loft:

Of man's first difobedience, and the fruit

Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal tafte

Brought death into the world and all our woe,
With lofs of Eden; till one greater man

Reftore us, and regain the blissful feat,
Sing heav'nly mufe.

The name of the perfon we are speaking to is introduced with the most respect in the beginning of the speech, but it is generally introduced in a more eafy and familiar manner after the first or